1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of suspensions for hard disk drives. More particularly, this invention relates to the field of a PZT microactuator for a disk drive suspension, the PZT having an electrical via and/or a wrap-around electrode for simplified electrical interfacing, and a method of making the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Magnetic hard disk drives and other types of spinning media drives such as optical disk drives are well known. Disk drive suspensions are the assemblies that hold the read/write head over the correct place on the spinning data disk, in order to write data to, and read data from, the desired data track on the disk.
Both single stage actuated disk drive suspensions and dual stage actuated (DSA) suspension are known. In a single stage actuated suspension, only a voice coil motor moves the disk drive suspension. In a DSA suspension, as for example in U.S. Pat. No. 7,459,835 issued to Mei et al. as well as many others, in addition to the voice coil motor which moves the entire suspension, at least one secondary actuator, often referred to as a microactuator, is located on the suspension in order to effect fine movements of the magnetic head slider to keep it properly aligned over the data track on the spinning disk. The microactuator(s) provide much finer control and much higher bandwidth of the servo control loop than does the voice coil motor alone, which effects relatively coarse movements of the suspension and hence the magnetic head slider. Lead zirconium titanate is one of the broadly used intermetallic inorganic compounds possessing piezoelectric properties and is commonly referred to as PZT. PZTs are often used as the microactuator motor, although other types of microactuator motors are possible. Examples of a dual stage actuated suspension, a PZT microactuator, and various methods of electrically and mechanically integrating the PZT into the suspension, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,570,688 to Hahn, and in copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/045,773. Other mechanical and electrical connections have been proposed.
PZTs having wrap-around electrodes, so that both the plus and the minus electrodes can be located on the same face of the PZT for simplified electrical connections, have been proposed. U.S. Pat. No. 6,716,363 to Wright et al. suggests sputtering metal onto the top and bottoms surfaces and onto at least one side of a PZT in order to produce a PZT microactuator having a wrap-around electrode.